Anger

Forgiveness isn’t for them. It’s so you can get on with your life. Holding onto resentment is like drinking the poison and expecting them to die.

liz, it can take a lot for people to understand that NPD basically can't grow or change. Maybe there are exceptions for the very rare NPD who can, but there's a lot of experts who won't even try to treat NPD because they just get manipulated and there's zero progress. I have a friend with an NPD father and even well into her 30s she hopes he can change though sometimes she gets some clarity now that he never has and maybe won't. For those without the disorder, it's just hard to understand how someone can be so pathological and incapable of change, and the rescue/ growth narratives we get in our pop culture, movies and TV shows that anyone can change if they try, doesn't help that perception. (This is why I like BoJack Horseman so much because their plot treatment of the actual difficulty of people with deep issues changing is very realistic.)

If your friend appreciates that the NPD ex is improving himself, then she sounds like she's a positive person who doesn't get it. To your point, doing fancy travel with someone else's money who didn't give it to him indicates he's making nothing more than superficial changes and is the same person as before. And if this is the case, it's back to considering what boundaries you need to feel comfortable continuing the friendship, even if it's not as close as it was before.

Anger has its role. I think of all this as similar in proceso to the stages of grief (Kubler-Ross model) where you rotate through denial, bargaining, anger, etc. in the long journey towards acceptance. I don't think it's linear-- we ping pong around them sometimes. And it is a form of grief, the loss of someone in our lives, or of a relationship, or what once was. I think in that sense we need to embrace anger as part of the process. Trying to suppress it would backfire. That doesn't mean you should take it out on the other person necessarily, even if it is justifiable given your particular circumstances...

I would say that when one is unaware, one may be limited in ability to express kindness, honesty, fidelity or respect, and apology does not undo what is done. When I was less aware, even if I intended to be honest, I deflected questions. I would share a limited amount of myself, as it felt too vulnerable to let another in too deeply.

I have felt more deeply connected to partners after earning security and have since treated them with more kindness and respect. I have felt kindness and respect even when unaware, but at the time, I lacked skill in expressing my feelings and had wounding around the connection.

Wether I could or can deliver these to satisfaction is of course very much dependent on the needs of the partner in question. This is not a matter of good and bad, but of compatibility and personal preference. If I can provide x, and you need 4x, I am not meeting your needs and notbody is wrong, we are simply incompatible. Unaware AP and DA are overwhelmingly incompatible with one another.

In my opinion, we hold the partner accountable when he or she has repeatedly failed to meet an explicit commitment.

If your wife agrees to buy groceries for the family for 800/month and she is consistently spending over 1000, that is shitty behaviour. If your husband agrees to cook 5 healthy meals every week and half the meals are fast food, that is shitty behaviour. This happens in many marriages and has nothing to do with attachment style.

For less purely practical responsibilities, there may be an interaction between attachment style and ability to meet commitments. If a DA wife agrees to live with you and is spending almost every weekend on the boat by herself, that is shitty behaviour. It is her responsibility to either refrain from making that commitment or to meet it most of the time. "We have agreed to live together and spend most weekends together. I have noticed you spent 4 of the last 5 weekends on the boat. Why is this happening? What is needed for you to meet the commitment you have made?". If an AP husband has agreed not to call you excessively when you are meeting with friends, and he is calling you during almost every social and networking event, that is shitty behaviour.  It is very much okay to express anger in an appropriate way. "I am at my friend's house supporting her through the loss of her sibling. This is the second time you are interrupting what I intended to be an undisturbed conversation. I feel angry when you do this, as you have agreed to refrain from calling excessively and this is impeding my ability to show up for a friend".

Of course, not every little detail can be part of your vows or your defined responsibilities, but there must be a shared set of values that behaviour can be compared to. If we only make commitments we intend to keep most of the time, which are
in alignment with our values, it is useful for us when our partner holds us accountable. It does take healthy boundaries to refrain from making commitments that are not in line with our values, and it takes courage to make the commitments that are in line with our values and discipline to generally keep them.

This also means that before marriage or cohabitation, there need to be some deep conversations about shared values and shared goals. There also need to be regular conversations about how we can live according to these values and meet these goals.